California’s Public University Employee Benefits: Challenges and Trade-Offs

California’s Master Plan for Higher Education envisioned a cohesive “system.” But California higher education is in fact more of a loose federation rather than a unified system. The structures, policies, and procedures that were put in place in 1960 largely remain in place today. Sectors and institutions have worked relatively independently, with limited coordination. Institutional policies and practices were mainly designed to benefit and perpetuate institutions,
without a strong emphasis on student progress or completion.

In earlier decades, this loose federation served the needs of the sectors and the state reasonably well. But since then, California’s economy has changed and more students than ever are seeking college degrees. The state’s college student population is now much bigger and more representative of the state’s total population than it was at the time the Master Plan was written. Increasingly, the siloed structure of California higher education—and in particular its sovereignty from K-12 education—has proven to be a mismatch for a student body that is older, more mobile, and less prepared than earlier generations.

As this paper will describe, today’s students face greater personal challenges and a college environment that has grown increasingly complicated. Students—many of whom are the first in their family to attend college—must navigate through a variety college options, admission requirements, course placement policies, career options, availability of courses and programs, regional constraints including impacted campuses and majors, financing options, degree or
certificate requirements, the development of education plans, and multiple, misaligned layers of support programs. Institutions are not sufficiently resourced to help students navigate these factors, resulting in an experience that is unwieldy and often counterintuitive for even the savviest student.